Twister's Patent Is Titled 'Apparatus for Playing a Game Wherein the Players Constitute the Game Pieces'

US3454279 was granted on July 8, 1969, to Charles F. Foley and Neil W. Rabens. Most patent titles are dry. This one describes an entirely new category of game in twelve words: Apparatus for Playing a Game Wherein the Players Constitute the Game Pieces.

The game is Twister.

A promotion for shoe polish

The idea is usually traced to Reyn Guyer, who ran a design firm in St. Paul, Minnesota, that produced promotional displays for companies. While working on a promotion for a shoe polish company, he developed the notion of a game played on the floor, where people stood on colored spaces.

Guyer brought in Foley and Rabens to develop it into a real game. The patent names the two of them. Guyer is widely credited with the original concept, and he went on to a second famous toy a few years later, the foam Nerf ball.

The game was originally called Pretzel. The name changed before release.

How it works

The equipment is simple. A plastic mat is laid on the floor, printed with four rows of six large colored circles, red, yellow, blue, and green. A spinner tells each player which limb to move, left or right, hand or foot, and which color to put it on.

Players keep every hand and foot where it has been placed, so after a few turns everyone is stretched, twisted, and leaning across each other. A player who falls, or who lets an elbow or knee touch the mat, is out. The last one standing wins.

The patent's point is in the title. In an ordinary board game, the players sit around the board and move small pieces across it. Here the board is on the floor, and the players' own bodies are what move across it. The game has no pieces other than the people.

An awkward launch

Milton Bradley released the game in 1966. The reception from the trade was nervous.

The appeal of the game is that it puts people in close, tangled physical contact, and for a mass-market family product in the mid 1960s that was a genuine concern. Some retailers were reportedly reluctant to stock it, and critics suggested it was more suggestive than a family game ought to be.

Early sales were weak.

The Tonight Show

On May 3, 1966, Johnny Carson played Twister on The Tonight Show with the actress Eva Gabor. It was very funny, the studio audience loved it, and a large share of the country was watching.

Demand followed almost immediately. The game that had been selling slowly became one of the season's big sellers, and it reportedly sold around three million copies in the following year.

Afterward

Twister has stayed in print ever since, and the basic equipment has hardly changed: a mat, twenty-four circles, and a spinner. It is also one of the few games whose central idea is completely stated by its patent title. Almost nothing else about it needed explaining.

The question of who gets credit for a game is a recurring one in this archive. For a much more contested case, see the woman who invented Monopoly.

See the original

The full text and figures of US3454279 are on patents.us.